Friday Report – October 13, 2017

Oct 13, 2017

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The Friday Report

October 13, 2017

Forum News

This Week on Education Matters:

Black Teachers Matter

Does having at least one black teacher make it less likely a black student will drop out of school and more likely to go to college? New research on North Carolina students says yes. We also discuss discipline disparities for students of color and meet the founder of a youth mentoring program in Durham.

Group Tied to Rich Donor Who Backed NC School Takeover Law Now Wants to Run Those Schools

A company tied to a wealthy Libertarian donor who helped pass a state law allowing takeover of low-performing North Carolina schools is trying to win approval to operate those schools.

Achievement For All Children was among the groups that applied for state approval to run struggling schools that will be chosen for the Innovative School District. Achievement For All Children is heavily connected to Oregon resident John Bryan, who is a generous contributor to political campaigns and school-choice causes in North Carolina.

The company was formed in February and registered by Tony Helton, the chief executive officer of TeamCFA, a charter network that Bryan founded. The board of directors for Achievement for All Children includes former Rep. Rob Bryan, a Republican from Mecklenburg County who introduced the bill creating the new district, and Darrell Allison, who heads the pro-school choice group Parents For Educational Freedom in North Carolina.

John Bryan contributed about $17,000 to Rob Bryan’s campaigns for the state legislature from 2013 to 2016.

In a letter posted to the network’s website in April, John Bryan said his commitment of “significant economic resources” – contributions to politicians and nonprofit “social welfare” groups, and the engagement of investment advisers and others – helped win legislative approval of the controversial North Carolina law that will have charter school operators and education management organizations take over up to five low-performing public schools.

John Bryan’s April letter notes that TeamCFA and Achievement For All Children (AAC) “have opted to use a 501(c)3 organization as the vehicle to attract funds necessary to expand their network of schools through this law.” Achievement For All Children describes itself as AAC on its website.

A spokeswoman for TeamCFA said she would provide comment when she could do so. Helton, who is chief executive officer of Achievement For All Children, did not immediately return a request for comment. Helton had cited an increased workload at TeamCFA for resigning this week from the state Charter Schools Advisory Board.

Pursuant to Section 10A.3 of the Appropriations Act of 2017, the General Assembly re-created a new NC Teaching Fellows program and Teaching Fellows Commission. This new program is to be administered by the UNC General Administration, in conjunction with the State Education Assistance Authority and the Commission. The program’s purpose is to recruit and retain “highly effective STEM or special education teachers in the State’s public schools.” G.S. 116-209.62(a). The 14-member Commission is charged with determining the program, procedures and forgivable loan recipient selection criteria, and to select the recipients. The new Commission members are as follows:

UNC Board of Governors appointees (confirmed as of September 2017)

School of Education Dean (1 of 2) – Dr. Mary Ann Danowitz, NC State

School of Education Dean (2 of 2) – Dr. Melba Spooner, Appalachian State

Community College President – Dr. Barbara Parker, Haywood Community College

Teacher – Ebonie Brownlee, Onslow County Schools

Principal – Mary Webb, Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools

Local Board of Education – Thomas Luckadoo, Catawba County Board of Education

Business & Industry – Lawrence “Bo” Somers, Duke Energy

General Assembly appointees

Dr. Mariann Tillery, High Point University

Dr. Jennifer Olson, Meredith College

Other ex officio members

Sara Ulm, Teaching Fellows Program Director

Jim Roberts, SEAA Board of Directors

Lisa Godwin, NC Teacher of the Year

Jason Griffin, NC Principal of the Year

Dr. Jim Merrill, NC Superintendent of the Year

The Superintendent of Public Instruction was to establish the list of authorized STEM and special education licensure areas and provide that list to the Commission and Authority by October 1, 2017. The Commission must select five (5) institutions of higher education with approved educator preparation programs to host the Teaching Fellows Program by November 15, 2017. Applications for prospective students must be made available by December 31, 2017. The Commission must select the first recipients and award initial forgivable loans for the 2018-19 academic year by April 1, 2018. Section 10A.3, Session Law 2017-57.

Do you know a leader in your community supporting our schools and making a difference in the lives of children both in and out of school? The Public School Forum is seeking nominations for individuals to be highlighted on our weekly statewide TV show, Education Matters. Click herefor an example of a recent spotlight.

For-Profit Charter Schools Are Growing in NC; Here Are 4 Things to Know About Them

A start-up culture dominated the founding of charters in 1997, when community leaders, teachers and local nonprofits opened schools to project their vision of public education. Even the Wake County jail had a charter.

Charters still sprout from local initiatives, but what supporters call the “charter school movement” has been helped along by networks of schools – including for-profit chains.

“It started as primarily a local effort where interested educators, parents, and community organizations saw a need, were interested in education and wanted to do something different,” said Keith Poston, president and executive director of the Public School Forum of North Carolina, a nonpartisan advocate for better schools and more public funding for education.

Last year, though, 27 schools run by for-profit companies received $118 million in state money. That’s about 23 percent of the state money that went to 167 charters.

“We are seeing fewer and fewer home-grown community charter schools and more and more for-profit chains and models,” Poston said.

The for-profit charter management company National Heritage Academies has opened 11 schools in North Carolina and has two more coming, giving it a presence in the state second only to Michigan, the company’s home base. Eight of the 13 National Heritage schools opened or were approved in 2012 or later, after a 100-school limit on charters dissolved.

Charter Schools USA, a for-profit, Florida-based company, opened its first two North Carolina schools in 2013. It now has six, and is set to open three more next year.

East Wake Academy students find their rides in the traffic line around the high school building at the public charter school in Zebulon, N.C. Photo Credit, Aaron Moody, The News & Observer.

Charter schools in North Carolina are more segregated than traditional public schools and have more affluent students. Most charters have either a largely white population or a largely minority population, according to a News & Observer analysis. On the whole, charter schools are more white and less Latino than schools run by local districts.

In North Carolina school districts, slightly more than half the students come from low-income families. But in charter schools, one in three students are low-income.

Charters weren’t supposed to look like this. The 1996 state law that allowed charters required that, within one year of the schools opening, their populations would reflect the racial and ethnic composition of the school district.

The law defined one of the purposes of charters: increasing opportunities to learn for all students, with a special emphasis on students who are at risk of academic failure or those who are academically gifted.

The original charter law was the product of a bipartisan compromise brokered by a House Republican and a Senate Democrat. The requirements for racial and ethnic diversity were the authors’ response to worries of charter opponents that the schools would cherry-pick the best students, said former Rep. Steve Wood, the Republican who negotiated the law.

“Opponents were concerned there would be creaming across the top,” Wood said. The diversity requirement is “a laudable goal,” he said. “Some of us said it may not be a completely achievable goal.” The original law also capped charters at 100 schools.

The charter school law has been rewritten many times in the last two decades, including a major and extensively-debated change that removed the 100-school cap. Diversity is still mentioned, but it’s no longer a requirement. A 2013 law dropped the mandate and diluted the language so charters must “make efforts” to reflect the local school districts’ racial and ethnic composition.

North Carolina State lawmakers say House Bill 514 was too controversial to discuss right now. Lawmakers could discuss it and make a decision when legislators reconvene in January.

If approved, House Bill 514 would create a Charter School District for Matthews/Mint Hill neighborhoods. Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District (CMS) sent a legislative alert to lawmakers informing them this could mean double taxation for residents. They would not only have to pay Mecklenburg County taxes, but possibly higher taxes in Matthews if more money is needed to fund education.

“I think they raise taxes anyway. At least I will know where it’s going, and it benefits my family,” taxpayer Ian Ray said.

CMS says more money will be needed to provide buildings, transportation, and food. The district estimates it could cost about $200 million to provide new schools for the 6,000 students attending a CMS school in Matthews/Mint Hill.

CMS believes if House Bill 514 passes, those 6,000 students would no longer be part of CMS.

“If you are setting up your own charter system, the expectation is from CMS is that you are going to serve all of your students. All Matthews kids would be coming out,” CMS School Board Chairperson Mary McCray said.

The State Board of Education is mulling a new plan to award monetary bonuses to certain teachers in elementary and middle schools.

The plan would award fourth- and fifth-grade reading teachers and fourth-to-eighth-grade math teachers bonuses of up to $5,000 per teacher based on their students’ performance on end-of-grade exams.

Funds would be allotted to pay teachers who are in the top 25 percent of teachers in the state, and the top 25 percent of teachers in their local school district, according to the improvements students show on the exams for reading or math over the previous year. Charter school teachers would only be eligible for the statewide bonus.

The bonuses would be allocated at $2,150 per qualifying teacher, up to $5,000 per teacher. The bonuses would be awarded in January.

“I think that it’s a great idea to offer more money to teachers,” said Allison Miller, a fifth-grade teacher at Lowell Elementary School. “It’s an underpaid job, in my opinion. So a bonus, I think it’s a good thing. It’s a step in the right direction.”

As Miller’s students created wind speed gauges called anemometers with paper cups and other materials, she discussed the salary challenges that she and other teachers have faced during her 15-year career as a public school teacher. She said incentives such as the proposed bonuses can help many North Carolina teachers who straddle the poverty line and help to attract more teachers to the profession.

New teachers in North Carolina who possess only a bachelor’s degree currently make a base salary of $35,000, with incremental pay raises with successive years of service up to a maximum of $51,300. Local school districts also provide a supplement to teachers. In Gaston, that salary supplement averages about $2,650 per teacher.

Many Rural NC Counties Don’t Have Enough Teachers. Can Bonuses Help Change That?

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N.C. State junior Celeste Castillo, seen here studying on Oct. 4, 2017, inside the university’s Poe Hall, is a member of the first class of future educators to be considered for TIP Teaching Scholars Award Program.

Photo Credit: Autumn Linford, The News & Observer.

A new program is offering education majors at N.C. State University a big bonus if they commit after graduation to working in some rural school districts that struggle to attract enough teachers.

The TIP Teaching Scholars Award Program will give teachers a total of $10,000 over two years, along with extra coaching from the school and the university. Ten students who graduate from N.C. State in 2019 will be placed in one of five counties – Cabarrus, Johnston, Lenoir, Onslow and Wayne.

The effort is a partnership among the school districts, the N.C. State College of Education and The Innovation Project, a nonprofit led by the superintendents of 24 N.C. school districts. Eventually, the goal is to expand the program to other rural counties.

“We hope that having the financial award will be enough to pique their interest, and then we hope that they will see that these really are great places,” Ann McColl, CEO of The Innovation Project, said of teachers. “We think we can help build a community around them that can support them. Then they can see themselves as a part of something bigger.”

Program leaders hope the initiative will help ease a teacher shortage in rural North Carolina school districts. The Johnston County system in the Triangle is short 18 teachers this year, and 32 percent of new hires last year were from out of state. Cabarrus County near Charlotte needs 13 more teachers, and Onslow County in the eastern part of the state needs 28.

The General Assembly weighed in on education during the special session last week. On Friday, Governor Roy Cooper gave his perspective.

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Friday morning, he released a statement criticizing the legislature for not taking action on a few education-related items. One, a fix to the K-3 class size restrictions some districts say are going to leave them strapped for resources next year, was a particular focus of his ire.

“Legislators failed to take action on the kindergarten through 3rd grade class size

requirement or fund new teaching positions necessary to prevent schools from eliminating classes and forcing students to move to different schools,” he said in a statement.

“While the General Assembly capped class sizes for kindergarten through 3rd grade at 18 students, legislators failed to provide funding for the additional 4,700 teaching positions necessitated by the smaller class sizes. As a result, students are being forced to switch schools, specialized teachers are being moved into new roles, and programs like physical education, foreign languages, and the arts are being canceled. Parents and students across the state have called for action, but legislative leaders announced they would not take up the issue.”

He also pointed out the General Assembly’s delay in confirming his nominees to the State Board of Education and the Teachers and State Employees Retirement Board of Trustees.

Revised Applications for Funding from the Needs-Based Public School Capital Fund Now Available

Newly enacted legislation makes changes to program.

Revised applications for funding through the new Needs-Based Public School Capital Fund are now available, and the application deadline has been extended to 5 p.m. on Oct. 16. Language in Senate Bill 582, passed by the General Assembly last week and signed into law Sunday, clarified that the grant funds may be used only for school buildings.

The fund — more than $100 million over the next two years — was provided by the General Assembly to assist lower-wealth counties with their critical public school building capital needs. For this year and next year, funding will be available only to Tier 1 counties. In later years, Tier 2 counties also will be eligible.

On Tuesday, US2020 announced that WakeEd Partnership (WakeEd), a business-backed nonprofit organization committed to improving public education in the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS), has been awarded the US2020 STEM Mentoring Award for Excellence in Public-Private Partnerships. The STEM Mentoring Awards are a national platform to celebrate and encourage exceptional work in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) mentoring. US2020 will recognize the award winners today in Washington D.C., at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.

WakeEd is being recognized for two programs that they facilitate in partnership with the Wake County Public School System. SummerSTEM and World Café engage STEM businesses and organizations in supporting educators by helping them bring real-world lessons to the classroom.

Alysia Ferguson Garcia remembers the day two years ago that ended in her making a call to Child Protective Services. One of her students walked into drama class with what Garcia thought of as a “bad attitude” and refused to participate in a script reading.

“I don’t care if you’ve had a bad day,” Garcia remembers saying in frustration. “You still have to do some work.”

In the middle of class, the student offered an explanation for her behavior: Her mom’s boyfriend had been sexually abusing her. After the shock passed, the incident provided an opportunity for the class—and Garcia—to provide the student with comfort, and to cry.

When Garcia first started teaching, she wasn’t expecting the stories her students would share of physical and sexual abuse, hunger, violence, and suicide. The stories seemed to haunt her all the way home, she says, recalling nightmares and sleepless nights spent worrying about her students. They also dredged up deep-seated memories of her own experiences with abuse.

“When you’re learning to be a teacher, you think it’s just about lesson plans, curriculum, and seating charts,” said Garcia. “I was blindsided by the emotional aspect of teaching—I didn’t know how to handle it. I was hurt by my students’ pain, and it was hard for me to leave that behind when I went home.”

The Real Costs of Trauma

35% of children have experienced more than one adverse childhood experience.

(See chart below.)

Data shows that more than half of all

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U.S. children have experienced some kind of trauma in the form of abuse, neglect, violence, or challenging household circumstances—and 35 percent of children have experienced more than one type of traumatic event, according to the Center

s for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can have impacts that extend far beyond childhood, including higher risks for alcoholism, liver disease, suicide, and other health problems later in life.

Trauma in children often manifests outwardly, affecting kids’ relationships and interactions. In schools, the signs of trauma may be seen in a student acting out in class, or they could be

more subtle—like failure to make eye contact or repeatedly tapping a foot.

For teachers, who are directly exposed to a large number of young people with trauma in their work, a secondary type of trauma, known as vicarious trauma, is a big risk. Sometimes called the “cost of caring,” vicarious trauma can result from “hearing [people’s] trauma stories and becom[ing] witnesses to the pain, fear, and terror that trauma survivors have endured,” according to the American Counseling Association.

Students from City As School high school in New York City think like engineers as they construct a water filtration system. Photo Credit: Tara García Mathewson, The Hechinger Report.

Five groups of high school students worked around tables in Vielca Anglin’s science classroom on a recent afternoon at City-As-School in New York City. They had half-liter water bottles in front of them and a range of materials including pebbles, soil, rice, marbles, scouring pads and gauze. Their task: create a gravity-driven water filtration system that gets dirty water as clean as possible. It was up to them to decide what materials to use and in what order.

The lesson came five days after Hurricane Maria had pummeled Puerto Rico, when residents had started to realize the lack of access to clean water could cause a public health crisis on the island. Anglin was asking students to think and act like scientists and engineers.

“That’s what this class is about,” Anglin said. “Getting students to understand that they’re designers, that they’re engineers, and they can be a part of these real-world issues and real-world problems that are coming up.”

Around the tables, the students began debating what materials should go into the filtration systems and the best order for the materials. Adjua Ayoluwa advocated putting larger stones at the top of the system, layering materials by size from there.

“Usually when I see filtration systems, the bigger things are at the top so the large sediments can be filtered out first and then the smaller sediments are filtered out at the end,” Adjua said.

Another group did the opposite, and a third mixed up the layers, putting rocks on top, then layers of rice, gauze, more rocks and more gauze. They each had their theories about why their designs might work, and at the end of class they poured water through their systems to see whose came out the clearest. (Adjua’s theory seemed to hold up.) The next day, after water had had plenty of time to drain through the systems, the students would test the pH levels for a final determination.

This type of project reflects the best intentions of the Next Generation Science Standards, which encourage teachers to enable students to learn science by doing. Drafted by representatives of K-12 education, higher education, industry and state governments between 2011 and 2013, the standards call for schools to help students build on science knowledge from one year to the next and make connections across disciplines that have historically been approached as completely separate.

Byoncé Reyna, a student at the Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design, jokes with Katie Vicuna during her internship at Pinnacol Assurance. Vicuna, an agency relations coordinator at Pinnacol, is Byoncé’s mentor.

Photo Credit: Nathan W. Armes, Education Week.

Colorado leaders are painfully aware that they need to find skilled workers to fill thousands of jobs. And they’re betting big on their new secret weapon: an apprenticeship program for high school students.

This fall, 116 teenagers from four districts have fanned out to 40 companies in Colorado in the inaugural year of the state’s apprenticeship program. Three days a week, the junior and senior students are at school, and two days a week, they’re earning minimum wage or more while they learn the ins and outs of finance, information technology, business operations, or advanced manufacturing.

Colorado has a grand vision for the outcome of this project: By 2026, 20,000 apprentices from all across the state will have finished high school with transferable college credit, at least one postsecondary credential, three years of work experience, and in most cases, an associate degree.

The program fits into an expanding national conversation about how schools can do a better job with the career side of the well-known mantra “college- and career-readiness.” A changing economy demands a workforce with sophisticated technical skills, and at least some training or education after high school.

In Colorado, the aim is to arm students with general work skills like good communication and time management, which can pay off in a wide variety of jobs, and industry-specific skills like software development or accounting. Each apprenticeship is based on a curriculum developed jointly by business, colleges, and K-12 schools. The goal is to better position students to save time and money in college and compete for jobs and to supply a bigger pool of skilled workers for Colorado companies.

The Promoting Innovation in Science and Mathematics or PRISM Award provides NC public school teachers the opportunity to receive up to $3000 in funding towards the purchase of STEM-related materials and up to $1500 for any necessary training for those materials.

The award was created in 2012 by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund to support teachers in their efforts to provide quality hands-on, inquiry-based activities for their students.

“The PRISM Award enables teachers to provide new and inventive ways of teaching STEM in their classrooms,” said Dr. John Burris, president of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. “For a relatively modest investment students all over North Carolina can benefit from the wealth of material that may not otherwise be available to them.”

The Fund has provided 238 awards to 77 of North Carolina’s 115 school districts for a total of $750,000. One teacher, Matthew Kinnaird in Buncombe County, used the PRISM Award to build a radio telescope with his class to gather information for NASA.

The Journal of Interdisciplinary Teacher Leadership, an online scholarly publication of the Kenan Fellows Program for Teacher Leadership, announces a call for papers for its next issue to be published in early 2018.

The program is most interested in manuscripts that address educational leadership, specifically how teachers can grow their influence without leaving the classroom, the interdisciplinary nature of STEM, project- and inquiry-based learning, agricultural education, science literacy, and education policy and advocacy.

They welcome articles on research, case studies, analysis and literary reviews. They will also accept evidence-based essays and editorials that are not simply personal accounts or strictly opinions. Full manuscripts must be submitted through kenanfellows.org/journals by December 1, 2017.

The North Carolina Museum of Natural Science’s RACE: Are We So Different? exhibit continues at the museum through October 22, 2017.

This exhibition looks at race through the lens of science, history, and personal experiences to promote a better understanding of human variation. Interactive exhibit components, historical artifacts, iconic objects, compelling photographs, multimedia presentations, and attractive graphic displays offer visitors to RACE an eye-opening look at its important subject matter. RACE tells the stories of race from the biological, cultural, and historical points of view offering an unprecedented look at race and racism in the United States.

In addition to the exhibit, a series of Speaker Events which includes Diversity in STEM topics were jointly planned in collaboration with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science and sponsored by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. All of the exhibit events were free of charge and the Speaker and Conversation series were streamed live and recorded for continued access and playback. You may access the series of recordings here.

The Friday Report is published weekly by the Public School Forum of NC and is distributed to Forum members, policymakers, donors, media, and Forum subscribers. Archived editions can be found at www.ncforum.org.